Post-Modern Uncertainty and Human Consciousness

Maybe the easiest way to summarize the philosophies we broadly call "Post Modern" is to say they represent a movement toward increasing uncertainty.

Going back to the beginning of "Modern" thinking, Locke begins with two premises that a) we can accurately understand the world and b) this understanding will lead to increased human happiness, but the movement from Locke et al's "Modern" conception of knowledge to the Post Modern is one of increasing uncertainty that either premise is correct.  Put another way, each step has moved from the black and white toward the gray.  Put another, other way, we are increasingly less confident that we are not being duped by Descartes "Evil Deceiver", although from a PoMo perspective, it is perspective itself and our own subjectivity, and the messiness of language, as well as various "Ideologies", or our Freudian subconsciousness that are all deceiving us, keeping us from seeing the world objectively.  In other words, we are stuck deceiving ourselves. (see: How Do We Know? and Modernism/Postmodernism)

This growing "uncertainty" attitude informs both our philosophies and then the arts based on those philosophies.

And note that this uncertainty has informed (or vice versa) the hard sciences as well, as we move from Newtonian physics to Einstein's theory of relativity and more recently into things like quantum mechanics, string theory and epi-genetics; if time itself is relative, what is certain? If an atom can be in two places at one time, how can we be sure of reality at all?

Basically, Nietzsche pointed out that scientific certainty "killed" the concept we call "God".  But then, he also points out, scientific certainty pretty much also killed scientific certainty.

The Uncertain Self

This growing uncertainty certainly has political implications and have played a major war in the culture wars (see: Implications of PoMo Theory), but, most relevant to this class and the films we cover in here, this new perspective challenges the entire the concept of the "self" or identity; what is the "essence" of our self-identity -- the way each of us thinks of ourselves as, well, ourselves -- but memory?  And what happens to this identity when we realize that our identities are often coded in language, and language is "messy" and cultural, and then we realize that our memories may actually be false?

How the Brain Constructs Rather Than Perceives Reality

"Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality" --Anil Seth TED Talk

False Memories

Watch "The Mind Explained: Memory" on Netflix for a good summary of the following:

Quick NIL summary intro "Can we implant false memories?"

** Nice BBC news summary of hot air balloon expirement ("False Memories" BBC Tomorrow's World) Full 30 minute episode.

Loftus TED talk (in depth and a bit long and boring (17 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB2OegI6wvI

Scientific American Alan Alda picnic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lisNg91_M0

The Cultural Self

Postmodern philosophies imply that the Modernist conception of the independent "self" is in fact partially a myth: there is no break between this thing I call my "self" and my cultural influences (Locke's "experience" writ large); I am as linked to my culture, my tribe or pack or "colony" as any other human or wolf or ant.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it returns humans to their more traditional social sphere, balancing the solipsistic, Modern, Jeffersonian “right to happiness” with more socially defined and socially integrated perspectives on what it means to be a "person" or individual;  from a PM perspective,  humans see themselves as inextricably linked to one another: there is no or at least less difference between the self and Other, the individual and his/her culture. 

From a moral perspective these theories may imply a certain social responsibility -- a responsibility for each individual to care for others.  Grasping that our minds are made up of socially constructed Ideologies does not necessarily "free" us from our dependence on those Ideologies, for the simple reason that we are as dependent on others as any previous society or, more to the point, any other social organism.  

Finally, just because ideas are socially constructed does not imply that they are not useful, beautiful, or even necessary. For example, understanding that a Romantic love for nature is simply "Ideology" more than "spiritual truth" simply changes the way I experience nature, rather than somehow ruining it;  in fact, for me personally, seeing Romanticism as Ideology has "freed" me to expand my appreciation for environments like Rome or NYC instead of limiting this love to places like Bonners Ferry or Yosemite, and it freed me from seeing loggers as bad guys somehow "ruining" nature (although I am also still free to think rationally about whether there are "better" and "worse" approaches to how we treat our physical environment;  I don't have to think washing my hands after blow my nose is moral or immoral to think that washing them is a good idea). (see: Implications of PoMo Theory)